Apologies for the laziness and busyness...

So things have been quite good here. I am generally happy and don't feel dragged out all the time. It might just be the change of scenery, or the feeling of a new beginning. I dunno. I live on the edge of a small village with rice paddies on one side. These, it must be admitted, are far from ideal Watchy living arrangements, but the "Special Tourist Zone" is well within walking distance, I actually CAN walk because the air isn't horribly polluted, and the city itself, the one I technically live in, is only three subway stops away. I miss Seoul, but where I live now is pretty perfect.

My role at school is more along the lines of Special Pet Foreigner than Teacher, and the only person who will speak to me in English is my coteacher and the only person who will speak to me in Korean is the principal, which leaves me pretty friendless there. However, we have our own English office and two English classrooms, a whole English zone, and I don't actually see anyone except my coteacher and students most days. The students, especially the girls, are extremely excited by the new Special Pet Foreigner and like to analyze my appearance every day. It is somewhat overwhelming but I suppose the novelty will wear off soon enough.

Now, about this English zone. The government here has spent craploads of money promoting English and rather than doing anything effective, they've gone for flash and show. A foreigner in every school, every English classroom with a smartboard, etc. There's an interactive computer program for each textbook, set up so that one lesson actually takes the whole forty minute class, and we don't have a lot of class time (or any, really) to spare; basically I have more resources to teach less material than I've ever had in my life. However, I am apparently allowed to deviate from the text as long as I teach the same curriculum... so we shall see.

We have to have a medical checkup before we get to register, and this has caused no little contention as such things are clearly an invasion of privacy by Western standards, especially considering that they only consulted with my coteacher in Korean and not with me. This coteacher says that actually all Korean public servants, including teachers, have to have them and the Immigration requirement of AIDS and drug testing is less strict than the full physical the Korean teachers go through. Nonetheless, such things are usually included as part of a full physical, so I had one, so they discovered high glucose and there were a few not very fun days while I tried to get various people to relax and explained that this wasn't in any way news to me and was to be expected during my first week in an unfamiliar environment. Then it turned out that they hadn't even included the test results for AIDS or drugs, the only ones we actually needed, so we had to go back to the hospital to get those, which somehow magically appeared on my paper without any further testing, leaving me totally confused as to whether they had tested it previously and not put it on the paper for whatever reason or if they had just added it after my coteacher called them and lectured them about screwing up.

Soooo, my passport is now in the hands of Suwon Immigration for the next two weeks or so. I do hope this won't affect my plans for the weekend, though I fear it may as I have no way of doing a bank transfer without it and no way of paying for Sunday's trip without the bank transfer.